The ten firms to make this year’s Top Track 100

TEN North West companies feature in the annual ranking of Britain’s biggest private businesses, with an Altrincham-based recruitment firm making the list for the first time.

Engineering recruitment firm NES Global Talent has made its debut on the 15th annual Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100, and despite the downturn in the oil & gas industry, it grew sales 4% to £648m. It sits alongside fellow recruiters Fircroft and Salford-based Morson.

Retail trio Shop Direct, TJ Morris and Matalan also make the ranking, while shipping, finance and convenience store group Bibby Line, fuel card manager Radius Payment Solutions, fast-growing petrol station operator Euro Garages and European Metal Recycling (EMR) complete the list.

Ranked 13th – the same position as last year – family-owned scrap metal giant EMR, headquartered in Warrington, is the highest placed regional company with annual sales of £2.5bn.

It has invested in new technologies to recover more from scrap cars, recycling the plastics and using the remaining rubber and foam to generate more than 40MW of electricity a year at its energy-from-waste plant. It is one of only 24 companies on the league table to have appeared every year since the first Top Track 100.

Darwen-based Euro Garages had the biggest jump up the list, ranking 72nd overall (2015: 96th). It achieved the biggest percentage increase in sales in the region, up 26% to £816m, partly due to its acquisition last year of 172 sites from Exxon Mobil and Shell.

The company won M&A Deal of the Year at TheBusinessDesk’s Rainmaker Awards last week for a deal which saw TDR Capital take a minority stake, valuing the firm at about £1.3bn

The ten regional companies achieved sales of more than £12.9bn and profits of £727m in their latest accounts. Collectively they employ 48,000 people.

The Top Track 100 is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events company.

The companies in the North West appear with businesses from around the UK, including high-profile national brands such as Dyson, JCB, Specsavers and Virgin. The full list will appear in the Sunday Times July 10.